Olson's Extinction and the latitudinal biodiversity gradient of tetrapods in the Permian

The terrestrial vertebrate fauna underwent a substantial change in composition between the lower and middle Permian. The lower Permian fauna was characterized by diverse and abundant amphibians and pelycosaurian-grade synapsids. During the middle Permian, a therapsid-dominated fauna, containing a di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2017-04, Vol.284 (1852), p.20170231-20170231
Main Authors: Brocklehurst, Neil, Day, Michael O., Rubidge, Bruce S., Fröbisch, Jörg
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amphibians
Animals
Biodiversity
Extinction
Extinction, Biological
Fauna
Fossils
Latitudinal Biodiversity Gradient
Mass extinctions
North America
Olson's Extinction
Palaeobiology
Permian
Russia
Sampling
Sampling Bias
Terrestrial environments
Tetrapoda
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Summary:The terrestrial vertebrate fauna underwent a substantial change in composition between the lower and middle Permian. The lower Permian fauna was characterized by diverse and abundant amphibians and pelycosaurian-grade synapsids. During the middle Permian, a therapsid-dominated fauna, containing a diverse array of parareptiles and a considerably reduced richness of amphibians, replaced this. However, it is debated whether the transition is a genuine event, accompanied by a mass extinction, or whether it is merely an artefact of the shift in sampling from the palaeoequatorial latitudes to the palaeotemperate latitudes. Here we use an up-to-date biostratigraphy and incorporate recent discoveries to thoroughly review the Permian tetrapod fossil record. We suggest that the faunal transition represents a genuine event; the lower Permian temperate faunas are more similar to lower Permian equatorial faunas than middle Permian temperate faunas. The transition was not consistent across latitudes; the turnover occurred more rapidly in Russia, but was delayed in North America. The argument that the mass extinction is an artefact of a latitudinal biodiversity gradient and a shift in sampling localities is rejected: sampling correction demonstrates an inverse latitudinal biodiversity gradient was prevalent during the Permian, with peak diversity in the temperate latitudes.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rspb.2017.0231